No Unity in Afghanistan Cricket Team in ICC World Cup

KABUL – Former Coach of Afghanistan National Cricket Team said that there is no unity in Afghanistan cricket team after change of its captain.
“It is very obvious that there are issues within the camp,” said Rashid Latif, who coached Afghanistan cricket team for a year.
“Outside pulls and pressures are visible on the field too. What is disappointing is the fact that earlier the players used to fight till the end and there was unity in the squad. But now with Asghar being changed as captain, there is none of it,” Latif said.
Afghan was dismissed as captain of the team before the World Cup, in which they lost all five matches they have played so far.
The move was criticized by Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi, two senior players in the side.
Afghanistan’s current head coach Phil Simmons has also promised that he will expose the truth behind change of captain after the World Cup ends.
Simmons’ immediate predecessor Lalchand Rajput believes the major blame lies with the continued failure of the batting department.
“During my tenure, I had worked to improve the batting,” said Rajput, now Zimbabwe’s Head Coach, told Cricket Next from Amsterdam. “We had identified the players and stuck to them. They were coming into their own. But in this World Cup, its gone all haywire with them going from 40-1 to 125 all out. As international sides, you can have bad days. How can you be consistently bad like this?”
He said that somewhere the coach also needs to take responsibility, and work on changing the mindset of the squad.
“Shahzad was an important player, but I made him understand that discipline is very important,” he said. “Give him his space, make him feel important, but he got no special treatment. Also, most of their players have the T20 mindset because they play so much of that format and are always in a hurry. As a coach, you need to make them aware of the longer versions and the skills required.”
Shahzad was ruled out of the World Cup due to knee injury but he protested the decision and threatened to quit cricket.
“These players are very chaloo(Shrewd) like us from Mumbai, because they have played a lot of tennis ball cricket,” said Rajput. “You will see there is a good lot of spinners Qais Ahmed, Zahir Khan and even Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, there are good fast bowlers like Sayed Shirshad. Batting also has the likes of Najibullah (Zadran) and Rahmat (Shah). They just need a good captain and an effective guide,” Rajput said.
(Sahar News)